When Nita Morales hires Elvis Cole to find her missing adult daughter, she isn’t afraid, even though she’s gotten a phone call asking for ransom. She knows it’s a fake, that her daughter is off with the guy Nita will call only “that boy,” and that they need money: "Even smart girls do stupid things when they think a boy loves them." But she is wrong....

The Sentry: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 14

Five years ago, Dru Rayne and her uncle fled from Louisiana to Los Angeles after Hurricane Katrina hit, but now they face a different kind of danger. A neighborhood protection gang savagely beats Dru’s uncle, but Pike witnesses it and offers his own brand of protection. Oddly enough, neither of them seems to want it — and neither do the federal agents mysteriously watching their storefront, men who appear quite willing to let the gang have its way.

The First Rule: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 13

The organized criminal gangs of the former Soviet Union are bound by what they call the thieves' code. The first rule is this: A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. He must have no family - no wife, no children - because only other criminals are his family. If any of the rules are broken, it is punishable by death.

Chasing Darkness: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 12

It's fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. As the residents of Laurel Canyon are being evacuated from their homes, Police and Fire Department personnel find the corpse of a recluse who apparently committed suicide. Clutched in his lap is a photo album containing photographs of seven young women who have been murdered.

The Forgotten Man: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 10

Los Angeles, 3:58 a.m.: Elvis Cole receives the phone call he's been waiting for since childhood. Responding to a gunshot, the LAPD has found an injured man in an alleyway. He has told the officer on the scene that he is looking for his son, Elvis Cole. Minutes later, the man is dead.

The Watchman: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 11

Pike commits himself to protecting the girl, but when they immediately come under fire, he realizes someone is selling them out.

As the body count rises, Pike's biggest threat might come from the girl herself, a lost soul in the City of Angels, determined to destroy herself - unless Joe Pike can teach her the value of life...and love.

The Last Detective: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 9

Elvis Cole's relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained. When she moved from Louisiana to join Elvis in Los Angeles, she never dreamed that violence would so easily touch her life - but then the unthinkable happens. While Lucy is away on business and her 10-year-old son, Ben, is staying with Elvis, Ben disappears without a trace.

L.A. Requiem

Edgar Award nominee Robert Crais’ L.A. Requiem is a gritty, harrowing look into the minds of a serial killer and the men determined to stop him. Elvis Cole and former cop Joe Pike have been partners in a detective agency for 12 years. After an ex-girlfriend of Pike’s disappears, the girl’s father asks them to help the police with the search. When the missing persons case turns into a hunt for a killer who has been stalking victims in Los Angeles, Cole and Pike find themselves battling both a hostile police department and a madman.

Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 7

When a 15-year-old girl shows up to plead with Elvis to find her errant father, his first impulse is to hand the case over to Social Services. But he sees how hard the kid is working to keep her two siblings together and afloat. The father sounds like an angel; the case should be a cinch. But as Elvis investigates, he finds the dad seems to be a mover in the criminal underworld who is on the verge of a grand scheme.

Voodoo River: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 5

.A. private eye Elvis Cole is hired by popular television star Jodie Taylor to delve into her past and identify the biological parents who gave her up for adoption 36 years before. Cole's assignment is to find out their biological history and report back. It seems all too clear cut. But when he gets to Louisiana and begins his search, he finds out there's something much darker going on. Other people are also looking for Taylor's parents - and some are ending up dead.

Sunset Express: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 6

Elvis Cole, wisecracking private eye, finds himself embroiled in a controversial LA murder case. A wealthy WASP entrepreneur appears to have murdered his wife. A hot-shot defense attorney takes the case and hires Elvis to find proof that the L.A. detective - rumored to be dirty - fooled around with the evidence.

Free Fall: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 4

Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies: Her fiance, Mark Thurman, is a decorated L.A. cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer's sure he's in trouble - the kind of serious trouble that only Elvis Cole can help him out of.

Lullaby Town: An Elvis Cole - Joe Pike Novel, Book 3

Hollywood's newest wunderkind is Peter Alan Nelson, the brilliant, erratic director known as the King of Adventure. His films make billions, but his manners make enemies. What the boy king wants, he gets, and what Nelson wants is for Elvis Cole to comb the country for the airhead wife and infant child the film-school flunkout dumped en route to becoming the third biggest filmmaker in America.

Stalking the Angel: Elvis Cole - Joe Pike, Book 2

Hired by a hotel magnate to locate a priceless Japanese manuscript, L.A. private eye Elvis Cole encounters the notorious Yakuza, the Japanese mob, and is drawn into a game of sexual obsession, amorality, and evil.

Eyes of Prey: The Lucas Davenport Series, Book 3

The “Prey” novels by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist John Sandford consistently make the best-seller lists, but they are not for the faint of heart. Featuring Minneapolis Lieutenant Lucas Davenport, these thrillers are raw, graphic, and impossible to put down. In Eyes of Prey, a depressed and unfocused Davenport takes on a macabre case, tracking down a serial killer who maims the eyes of his victims after he has murdered them.

The Two Minute Rule

When ex-con Max Holman finally gets out of jail, freedom doesn't taste too sweet. The only thing on his mind is reconciliation with his estranged son, who is, ironically, a cop. But then he hears the devastating news: His son and three other Los Angeles police officers were gunned down in cold blood the night before Holman's release.

Stone Cold: Joe Pickett, Book 14

Everything about the man is a mystery: the massive ranch in the remote Black Hills of Wyoming that nobody ever visits, the women who live with him, the secret philanthropies, the private airstrip, the sudden disappearances. And especially the persistent rumors that the man’s wealth comes from killing people. Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for the governor, is assigned to find out what the truth is, but he discovers a lot more than he’d bargained for. There are two other men living up at that ranch. One is a stone-cold killer who takes an instant dislike to Joe.

The Monkey's Raincoat: An Elvis Cole Novel

When Ellen Lang's husband disappears with their son, she hires Elvis Cole to track him down. A quiet and seemingly submissive wife, Ellen can't even write a check without him. All she wants is to get him and her son back - no questions asked.

New York Dead

Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he’s too smart to be a cop, but it’s pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out. Suddenly he is on the front page of every New York newspaper and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country’s hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman.

Without Fail

Jack Reacher is approached by a Secret Service agent who needs a favor. "I want to hire you to assassinate the Vice President of the United States," she asks. She is the newly appointed head of the VP's security detail and wants Reacher to try to penetrate her team's shield. He has the skills and the stealth and no one knows him. How else can she be sure her protection is truly effective?

Hostage

Jeff Talley was a good husband, a fine father, and a frontline negotiator with LAPD's SWAT unit. But the high stress, unforgiving job took an irreparable toll on his psyche. After a despondent father murders his wife and son and takes his own life, Talley hits bottom. His marriage ends, he resigns from SWAT, and he struggles to escape from his former life. But Talley's pursuit of peaceful small-town life is about to change.

The Silent Girl: A Rizzoli and Isles Novel

In the murky shadows of an alley lies a female’s severed hand. On the tenement rooftop above is the corpse belonging to that hand, a red-haired woman dressed all in black, the body nearly decapitated. Two strands of silver hair — not human — cling to her body. They are Rizzoli’s only clues, but they’re enough for her and medical examiner Maura Isles to make a startling discovery: This violent death had a chilling prequel.

Ready to Kill: Nathan McBride, Book 4

When a mysterious note referencing a top-secret US operation is tossed over the wall of the embassy in Nicaragua, Nathan McBride and his old pal Harv are called out of retirement by CIA Director Rebecca Cantrell and sent to Central America. Cantrell wants the situation resolved quickly and knows that Nathan is the man to do it; after all, he has a history with the place. The jungle he and Harv are about to land in is the same one that Nathan barely escaped with his life decades before, an ordeal that left him physically and psychologically scarred.

The Bad Place

Frank Pollard awakens in an alley, knowing nothing but his name - and that he is in great danger. Having taken refuge in a motel, he wakes again only to find his hands covered in blood. As far as he knows, he's no killer. But whose blood is this, and how did it get there?

Publisher's Summary

Crais has never written a book with the power and intensity of Taken.

When Nita Morales hires Elvis Cole to find her missing adult daughter, she isn’t afraid, even though she’s gotten a phone call asking for ransom. She knows it’s a fake, that her daughter is off with the guy Nita will call only "that boy", and that they need money: "Even smart girls do stupid things when they think a boy loves them."

But she is wrong. The girl and her boyfriend have been taken by bajadores - bandits who prey on other bandits, border professionals who prey not only on innocent victims, but on one another. They steal drugs, guns, and people - buying and selling victims like commodities, and killing the ones they can’t get a price for.

Cole and Pike find the spot where the couple were taken. There are tire tracks, bullet casings, and bloodstains. They know things look as bad as possible.

But they are wrong, too. It is about to get much worse. Going undercover to find the couple and buy them back, Cole himself is taken, and disappears. Now it is up to Joe Pike to retrace Cole’s steps, burning through the hard and murderous world of human traffickers to find his friend. But he may already be too late.

Thrilling, emotional, passionate, with some of the best characters and well-crafted writing in all of crime fiction, Taken is further proof that "Crais just keeps getting better." (Publishers Weekly).

I have been reading the Cole/Pike series for years and greatly enjoy it. This one was right up there with the others. I found it interesting how it was told in a timeline of before and after Cole was taken by the "bad guys". Cole is a lot of fun, love his irreverant sense of humor. Pike is an interesting character who I would love to see more about.

The story was interesting and kept my attention while listening. You know that ultimately Pike will rescue Cole but you don't know what will happen to the characters who were taken.

It also makes you think about the struggles faced by people who try to come to the US illegally.

Luke Daniels did a good job narrating this story. Crais not only told an interesting story but address an important issue for the country and a big problem for CA, AZ, NM & Tx. Covering such a violent topic the usual humor of Cole was toned down. Every one should read this book and think about how to solve this societal problem.

I have read or listened to all of the Cole/Pike books by Robert Crais and am a big fan. Taken was one of his best. Human trafficking is one of the most despicable offenses that man commits against his fellow man and Crais exposes it in all its ugliness. But with Cole's quirky personality, the book is not so dark as to be depressing. Like all of Crais' books, they keep moving, never becoming bogged down in sub-plots or details that take away from a book. Luke Daniels' narration was excellent,

Retired CFO, Army wife, Mom of five, Grandma of six, two sons who served in combat, love to read books that reflect my values and faith, love mysteries, historical, military stories, and books that don't waste my time . . . if it doesn't have an ending that was worth the wait, I'm not a happy camper.

I've always liked Robert Crais and he did a great job with TAKEN. Every mother's worst nightmare is to have her child taken . . . whether the child is grown or not . . . all the twists and turns in tracking down the kidnappers and retrieving the college student who was taken will keep you alert and listening . . .

Would you consider the audio edition of Taken to be better than the print version?

I've listened to the audio version of all of Robert Crais's books. I like the narrators and think they add to the enjoyment. I prefer these particular books in audio.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Elvis is my favorite character. I like his personality and compassion. He's smart, funny and just a nice guy.

Have you listened to any of Luke Daniels???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have listened to him narrate The Sentry and several others. This one wasn't my favorite but I did enjoy it.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I definitely tried to do this all in one sitting. I get caught up in the story and don't want to stop until I'm done.

Any additional comments?

I enjoy listening to audio books and prefer listening to reading for certain authors. That usually is due to the great narrators chosen to perform them. I think the right narrator will either make or break whether I listen or read a book. I've started listening to a series and switched to reading when the narrator changes and doesn't have the same

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